Old Comics Thread

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This is a thread to talk about old comic books.

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I’m nearing the end of rereading all the comics I decided to keep after my parents moved to an apartment with no basement storage and I had to take all the stuff I kept there. Mainly what I kept are the X-Men comics (although somehow I hadn’t gotten rid of a Chuck Austen X-Men trade, an error I’ve corrected).
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I’m on to the part of Mike Carey’s X-Men: Legacy run that’s concurrent with Matt Fraction’s Uncanny X-Men (the San Francisco/Utopia era of X-Men comics).
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The pre-Legacy part of Carey’s run with Chris Bachalo and Humberto Ramos on art is excellent, probably my favorite X-book after classic Claremont, Morrison’s New X-Men, and Milligan/Allred X-Force. They’re just great action stories, like little movies on paper. The dialogue is snappy, the characterizations are condensed but weighty, the action is clever and dynamic. Rogue’s team of misfits (Sabretooth, Cable, Mystique, Lady Mastermind, Karima Shapandar, plus mainstays Iceman and Cannonball) is one of the coolest line-ups, mining humor and drama from how haphazardly the characters mesh together. Carey’s run is also probably the only time I’ve really liked Iceman as a character.
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Sadly this line-up deteriorates just before the Messiah Complex crossover, after which the book switches focus to Prof. X regaining his memories after a near-fatal head wound. Although Carey writes a good Xavier, and gets some good use out of villains Exodus and Frenzy, the book loses much of its cool in its transition. Too much old continuity and navel-gazing, and Scot Eaton’s artwork doesn’t do much for me. I’m looking forward to reading the Utopia-era parts which put the focus back on Rogue.
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I’m taking a break from Carey, though, and diving in to Fraction’s X-Men. This is a frustrating run because there’s a lot to like but it’s hampered by Greg Land taking on about half of the art duties (Terry Dodson, who I like, and Whilce Portacio, who I don’t really like, do the bulk of the other half). Fraction can also pack too much in to his arcs. You get the feeling that each one would be improved if a subplot was dropped and saved for a standalone issue. But Fraction’s enthusiasm and fondness for the characters comes through despite the flaws in his approach and Land’s bland photo-tracing.
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Even though Hickman’s currently doing a richer version of the Utopia idea in his X-books, Fraction has some cool ideas for his take on a mutant homeland, as well as for the period immediately preceding Utopia when most of the world’s mutants relocate to San Francisco. Mutants as subculture is probably the most interesting thing you can do with the X-Men and Fraction’s take isn’t completely eclipsed by Morrison and Hickman’s work. He also does a worthy job of utilizing less well known mutants, like the various student factions and fifth-stringers like Adam-X and Madison Jeffries, since, like Hickman, his book’s focus is mutants as a whole, not just the more popular X-Men.
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All in all, I’m glad I kept these issues, even though the runs are imperfect. But in some ways it’s more fun to reread flawed work, since you engage with it on a different than usual: how could this be better? It can be fun to get the creative juices flowing in that way, even if you don’t do anything with it.

I really liked that Carey/ Bachalo/ Ramos run too, Will. It gets overshadowed by the events of Messiah Complex and all that came afterwards, but it was a fun year or two whilst it lasted. A great, eclectic mix of characters in action packed stories, with great art. It’s the sort of book that would work wonderfully today alongside Hickman’s line up and not feel out of place at all.

As a rule I won’t buy fill in issues when I’m following a particular creative team on an ongoing book. I’d rather skip a few issues than buy something sub-par and narratively disruptive.

That’s why I missed Hellblazer #245 and #246 when they first came out, back in the summer of 2008. A decision I have regretted immensely in recent years, for this fill in was by Jason Aaron and Sean Gordon Murphy!

I finally picked up a couple of cheap, somewhat battered copies on eBay and read them this morning. It’s a creepy little two parter, tying back into the early days of the title and the infamous events of Newcastle. There are some effective moments that are going to linger on in the back of my mind for a while.

Neither creator is as accomplished as they later become here, but it’s clear that they had a lot of potential. Aaron’s writing is a little raw, and maybe relies a little too much on established horror tropes for expediency. Similarly, Murphy’s artwork doesn’t display the same polish that it does now, but you can still see his unique style coming through.

As a huge fan of both creators, I’m really glad I managed to find these two issues. It’s a solid two parter, but, it’s definitely still a fill in and I made the right decision skipping them back in the day. Without that affection for the creative team I’m not sure I’d recommend it to others.

Edit: clearly I have no idea how to embed an image, or rotate it!

Vikram wrote:

Edit: clearly I have no idea how to embed an image, or rotate it!

I don’t know about the rotating but if you just want to embed rather than attach then click the ‘img’ button at the top of reply section and insert the URl.

Ah, okay. So, I have to host it somewhere else and link to it here? That’s where I was going wrong. Cheers, Gar.

You don’t have to host it, we do have the attachment feature which you used, but I don’t know why it appeared sideways.

Unknown Soldier #219 – “The Edge Of History”

Frank Miller on an ancient Greek historical epic? No, this isn’t 300 but a short story from decades earlier in 1978 covering the history of the Achaeans and the birth of Greek civilisation as we know it.

At just a handful of pages (as one of several stories in this anthology) there isn’t much room here for anything other than the bullet-points of a story, and Miller doesn’t get much of a chance to really show off his skills – although there’s one page that lets him open up a little bit and provide some interesting angles and a bit of action.

For me, this is one of the less interesting of these early pre-fame Miller stories, in that there isn’t really much indication of his great talent at this point and there isn’t much connection to his future work, other than the 300 coincidence.

Still, it filled a gap in my Miller collection – which is pretty much complete now – so there’s that.

Adventure Comics #332

The Super-Moby-Dick of Space
By Edmond Hamilton & John Forte

The Legion’s best writer to date returns for what is one of my all-time favourite Legion stories.

The title gives it all away: this is Moby Dick. In space. And the cover leaves in no doubt over who’s playing Ahab:

So let’s forgive the preposterous notion that there’s a giant space whale flying from planet to planet. Yes, it’s ridiculous, it’s scientifically implausible. But that’s not important. It’s no more implausible than a yellow sun giving a boy the power to move planets. We’ve got to suspend our disbelief when we’re reading stories like this. These things exist, and that’s that. And accepting that they exist, what makes or breaks the story is: is the story of the characters within the story believable and compelling? This is where I often find Jerry Siegel falls down. His ideas are no more wild and whacky than Hamilton’s, but the way his characters react to those ideas makes no sense at all. Quite often, his characters do incomprehensible things just to make the plot work, and you’re shouting at them, just talk to your team-mates, you stupid…

Superficially, Hamilton sets up the same kind of conflict. Lightning Lad is compulsively driven to hunt down the Super-Moby Dick, ignoring the sensible advice of his team-mates and lashing out at them when they get in his way. But it’s done in such a way that we don’t think he’s stupid, we sympathise with him.

Tackling the monster alone, he shows all of the courage and restraint we would expect of a hero.

When badly injured, he tries desperately to continue his mission, but again that’s what we expect of our heroes.

It’s only when he sees the terrible personal cost that this dedication has levied that things start to come off the rails.

From what we know of Lightning Lad—even from his actions we’ve seen in the first two pages of this story (because Hamilton is mindful that this might be our first Legion comic, and so sets everything up for us so we understand the characters)—we know this isn’t right. He’s clearly gone mad. But not ‘irrationally’ mad for story purposes, it’s a madness we can understand because, for pete’s sake, he’s just lost his arm! And so we’re on his side, even as he’s slipping further into madness.

It’s really astonishingly sophisticated storytelling for a children’s comic from 1965. It’s simplified, obviously, because of the format and the page count. But in a few pages Hamilton tells a complete character arc for Lightning Lad without ever skimping on action or diminishing our sense of wonder. Comics just don’t do this any more. This is why I think most silver-age comics are better than most modern comics. And why Hamilton is one of my favourite writers, and this one of my favourite issues.

But on with the story, as the Legion (and also, as a nicely realistic touch, some random other groups) try various plans to stop the beast. It’s found that the beast has eaten kryptonite so Superboy can’t approach it, which is a clichéd trope, perhaps, but allows Superboy to contribute to the story in more creative ways. And we also get a foreshadowing of denouement, telegraphed early on.

Keep an eye on Lanphier. I have a feeling he knows more than he’s saying …

Ha, told you!

While Saturn Girl and Brainiac 5 worry about Lightning Lad’s mental health, Superboy and Colossal Boy get the spotlight as they try a plan to trap the beast. But it’s still Lightning Lad’s story, as he gets steadily more obsessed, even to the point of messing up his team-mate’s plan

(The perspective in this panel doesn’t strike me as terribly good. The monster seems tiny, unless you realise that Colossal Boy is in giant form and Superboy is miles in the foreground. But it’s a rare bad panel from the otherwise excellent John Forte.)

But in a sure sign of how bad Lightning Lad has become, just stopping the beast isn’t his goal. It’s his personal vengeance that matters.

It soon becomes obvious that Lightning Lad is intending to kill the creature. Which, in a modern comic, you’d be, yeah, fair enough, it a rampaging beast, go ahead. But luckily this isn’t a modern comic, so once again you get moments of outstanding heroism.

And, call me old-fashioned if you wish, but this is why I love super-heroes. Punching and shooting bad guys doesn’t make you a hero. Standing in front of a kryptonite monster and letting yourself getting blasted because monsters deserve to live too, that is heroic.

It all ends well, obviously. Lightning Lad comes to his senses, Dr. Lanphier confesses to him that he accidentally grew a harmless creature to giant size, and together they find a way to defeat it without killing it.

Along the way we’ve learned something about the Legionnaires. Noble, self-sacrificing, loyal and compassionate. Basically: heroes.

Keep your gun- and claw-toting vigilantes. I’ll take silver-age heroes any day.

[Note: I’m far too lazy to upload and embed the panels that should be illustrating this; sorry if part of it read oddly because of that.]

I just glanced at the post but to sum it up, Lightning Lad is a dick. That about sum it up?

Adventure Comics #333

The War Between Krypton and Earth / The Civil War of the Legion

By Edmond Hamilton & John Forte

Confusingly, each part of this story is given a different title, though it’s still one story. The cover lists ‘The Civil War of the Legion’, which to be honest doesn’t hook me because the Legion are always fighting one another over some misunderstanding. But the part 1 title, ‘The War Between Krypton and Earth’, is intriguing, as it seems impossible unless this is an imaginary story. Well, I’ve just got to see what all this is about …

The story opens with the discovery of writing on a metal tablet in an archaeological dig on Earth. Superboy recognises the writing as the language of Krypton and Brainiac 5 uses carbon dating (there’s a bit of real science for the kids!) to determine that the tablet is millions of years old. The plot thickens …

Of course any self-respecting Legionnaires are going to hop into time bubbles and go to interfere with the past find out what’s going on. They split into two teams, one going to ancient Krypton, one to ancient Earth.

Superboy’s team discover a Krypton that has turned against science, and a group of renegade scientists who are trying to fell to another world to form their own colony. The leader of the group is Zat-El, who Superboy speculates may be an ancestor of his. The team immediately agrees to help the scientists reach their destination … Earth!

This is really a great concept, and it’s a very typical Hamilton idea to speculate that Earth may have been colonised by Kryptonians in the distant past. But as soon as you put a little thought into it, there are so many problems with the plan.

First, if Zat-El really is Superboy’s ancestor, is Superboy preventing his own birth by moving him off Krypton? (And in fact, all the Kryptonian scientists die by the end of the story, so that’s basically Superboy enacting the ‘killing his own grandfather’ paradox. Whoops!)

Never mind, let’s assume Superboy’s idle speculation about ancestors is wrong. It doesn’t affect the story.

And let’s assume the Kryptonians would have completed their space ark without the Legion interfering, so there’s no real paradox created. Moving on then …

Earth had a red sun in the past? No, not according to any current scientific theories. Was this the prevailing theory in the 1960s? I don’t know, but it seems unlikely. Stellar evolution was fairly well understood for most of the 20th century I think. So Hamilton has just invented the fact for the sake of the story—understandable, because giving the Kryptonians super powers on Earth would have wrecked the story.

But, hold on. The Legion assumed the Kryptonians would have super powers, and they still helped them go to Earth, when even the slightest thought would have told them the implications for human history, if not human life itself, are horrendous. This may be the most irresponsible act in the Legion’s long history of irresponsible acts.

Meanwhile we follow the other time bubble to Earth, and find an advanced civilization of humans who live in a nation they call … Atlantis!

But, uh-oh, have you spotted what I’ve spotted?

Leta Lal? You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you?

*sigh*

Yeah, yeah, just get a room already!

Now we get to the meat of the story, which basically turns into a metaphor for the Palestinian question (whether intentionally is debatable; I don’t know Hamilton’s politics):

The Legion splits into Kryptonian supporters and Atlantean supporters, and so the stage is set for their ‘civil war’.

The war itself is perhaps the least interesting element of the story. Though it is well written, with good use of the various Legionnaires and their powers, and a good opportunity for some soul-searching by Superboy:

If there is some unease in the Legion about fighting an actual war, it’s offset by the fact that the soldiers of their allies (both Kryptonian and Atlantean) are using ‘stun’ weapons. Until it’s discovered that they’re not!

And this is the trigger for Superboy to finally do the Right Thing. As you know he must, because he’s Superboy:

Remember he’s doing this under a red sun, so he has no powers. But that’s not going to make him hesitate, because he’s Superboy.

The war is never entirely resolved, though. Brainiac 5 has been trying to determine why the Earth’s air is making the Atlanteans cough, and he finally finds the answer:

And then comes my favourite twist in the entire story:

What? This is genius! Hamilton not only finds a neat resolution to his own story, he also explains the origins of Atlantis in the modern DC universe! (So if Superboy isn’t actually a descendant of Zat-El, wouldn’t it be ironic if Lori Lemaris was a descendant of Leta Lal?)

And finally, let’s tie up everything up so there are no paradoxical Kryptonians left on Earth … oh, but let’s throw the origin of Earth’s dinosaurs in there!

This whole story is excellent. It’s packed with ideas and gives you questions to ponder while still tying everything up neatly at the end.

One of the best Legion stories ever. I think I said that last month, too. Edmond Hamilton is on a roll at the moment, doing some of the best work of his (long) career.

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Chris-S

Batman #603

I never read “Bruce Wayne: Murderer” or its sequel “Bruce Wayne: Fugitive” at the time, and I’ve always kept away from them given than I have no particular desire to revisit a mammoth crossover event in the batbooks that doesn’t seem to be particularly fondly remembered by anyone these days.

But I picked up this single issue for the same reason that I picked up the Gotham Noir one-shot and Hawkman #27: it represents one of the earliest pairings of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and as a fan of their work I wanted to check it out – because that’s what completist comic book fans do.

And it’s actually pretty good, and thankfully works as a story in its own right, outside of the wider crossover gubbins.

It sees Batman called to a hospital to meet with an old, sickly cop who has one last case that he needs help with. It turns out that this cop crossed paths with Bruce a couple of times before in his career – once when Batman helped him out and once, a lot earlier, when he was one of the cops who attended to Bruce at the scene of his parents’ murder. And it’s this case that the guy wants Batman’s help to crack.

The story doesn’t really go anywhere from there, and in truth Batman doesn’t do much all issue but stand in a hospital room listening to an old man reminiscing about his career, but it’s the kind of comic that shows how a book can be as enjoyable for how it’s told as for the core story itself.

Brubaker obviously does well with the noir/crime clichés, and Phillips keeps things interesting with ‘cascading’ page layouts (similar to the type used in Sleeper) as opposed to a rigid grid.

While it’s not a hugely memorable Batman comic that’s going to trouble any top-ten lists, it’s an enjoyable little yarn that shows off its creators skills well, and manages to not get bogged down in the larger storyline. I’m glad I read it.

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Chris-S

Overall Murderer/ Fugitive was a strange misfire to my eyes. It was the beginning of the end of the Rucka/ Brubaker years and the start of the slippery slope that eventually lead to the appalling War Games crossover.

That being said, Batman #603 was the turning point in the story, after which Bruce started to get his shit together again. For all that it was a self contained story, it was a pretty important piece of the overall epic.

Talking about Brubaker’s time in Gotham, here are a series of fantastic interviews with him that are well worth a read if you haven’t seen them before – https://comicsalliance.com/ed-brubaker-batman-interview-part-one/

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Todd, Dave

My read through of Dan Slott’s Amazing Spider-man run caught up to vol 3. The post- Superior run encompassing Spider-Verse.

Overall it was pretty enjoyable, as Peter tries to pick up the pieces of his life, and adjusting to the reality of Parker Industries.

Humberto Ramos’ artwork here was fantastic. Easily the most polished I have seen his Spider work look. I’ll miss it on the next volume.

Spider-Verse was fun, I suppose, although Morlun’s family never felt as dangerous as Morlun alone did in the JMS/Romita Jr days. I like how the crossover was produced, with every tie in issue having a meaningful part of the story to tell; but, unfortunately the variable quality of each book’s creative team made for a disjointed experience. It’s also really annoying that the OHC didn’t publish the books in reading order, so I had to jump backwards & forwards every few minutes.

Olivier Copiel’s artwork on the main story was astonishingly beautiful. I wish he had had the time to draw it all.

Concurrently I re-read Spider-man 2099 vol 2 by Peter David and Will Sliney. It was better than I remembered it to be, working better as a supporting book than a standalone. The art continues to hurt my eyes though.

And, whilst I was a big fan of the Hopeless/ Rodriguez run on Spider-Woman I had never read the first arc with Greg Land on art before. Surprised to say that it was really fun. Just such a weird choice to launch the series with a convoluted tie in to a crossover, that makes no sense on its own, before rebooting the whole series with #5. Madness.

 

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Chris-S, Dave

Vikram wrote:

Just such a weird choice to launch the series with a convoluted tie in to a crossover, that makes no sense on its own, before rebooting the whole series with #5. Madness.

This is 2010s Marvel in a nutshell.

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Todd, Vikram

I’m assuming that happened when Axel Alonso was EIC.

I have to say he doesn’t feature very highly in my list of Marvel EICs and I was quite happy when Cebulski took over (I did also have the great pleasure of meetin Cebulski once and he was impossibly nice)

Vik is right, that Spider-Woman scheduling is peak insanity from Marvel.

I heard it being positively reviewed on iFanboy’s podcast so went to seek that run out on Marvel Unlimited. I picked up what I thought was the natural place with issue 1, it started in the middle of the story and I had no idea what was happening. What a fool I was when of course you should start with issue 5 of the previous volume of a book rebooted for no reason at all, the creative team was the same and it just carried on as normal from the previous issue.

Despite that the book is really good fun once you can work out where to start.

 

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DavidM, Todd, Vikram

[garjones]

Star Brand – so the background to this is many years ago I picked up a 4 of the first few issues when they appeared in newsagents near me. Then a couple of years later I picked up issue 16 of a wildly changed book.

So I decided to use Marvel Unlimited to read the whole thing, which isn’t especially long.

It’s a weird ride.

So anyway the things I liked and remembered from those first few Jim Shooter and John Romita Jr were still there. It’s the only one of the New Universe books that stayed true to the idea of the line being a more realistic version of Earth than the 616 books. Ken Connell is the Star Brand and his clothes get wrecked in a fight (until he gets given a better suit), he gets lost when he flies because the power of flight doesn’t give you auto navigation. The world leaders are Reagan and Gorbachev and Ghadaffi, they eat McDonald’s and Denny’s and real life brands. It also moves in real time a month elapses between each issue.

The origin initially looks the same as Green Lantern’s, an alien comes to Earth and passes over his power to Ken Connell before he dies. Except (and I noticed this more this time with age and wisdom) Ken is a bit of an arsehole. He’s perpetually horny, he comments on how he fancies every woman that appears in the book, including a 17 year old babysitter, and cheats on his single mother girlfriend a couple of issues in. He cheats on her with a girl who he continually refers to as being quite thick but is devoted to him completely. He does a crappy job washing cars because he has no ambition in life. He’s no Hal Jordan.

The Green Lantern origin then starts to unravel a bit as the alien returns wanting it back and we get lots of hints none of it was true, that storyline gets put on hold though because Shooter gets sacked by Marvel (and Romita Jr exits the book with him, if I remember correctly to do Daredevil with Ann Nocenti).

The next few issues are pretty terrible fill in material, Cary Bates scripts two and one by another guy I have never heard of before or since and forgotten already. I didn’t even know Bates had ever worked for Marvel but a quick google says he did a handful of New Universe fill-in issues. For all his history with Superman he’s not suited to this kind of new realistic approach, the main plot goes nowhere and one issue is basically a dream sequence of a silver age superhero comic like he usually wrote. It all seems really like inventory material as one character seriously injured in the previous issue is suddenly fine.

Then John Byrne comes on, which is quite ironic as part of the failing of The New Universe was Shooter had his budget slashed so he had to use editors and new writers to fill the books, now he’s gone they hire one of the most expensive guys in the industry in 1987/8.

The whole thing transforms very quickly, the deliberate mundane realism is replaced by much higher concept stuff and 2 issues in Byrne has Ken be stupid as fuck and blow up his home city of Pittsburgh by accident. Byrne clearly saw all the weaknesses of the character before and amplifies them even more, he really is a dick. Shooter made him more sympathetic even if flawed much more than a usual Marvel lead.

Then it gets into the realms of something like Miracleman, Ken’s mistress is pregnant, his son is born, he is a star child evolving quickly that experiments with ending death and looking for meaning in the universe. It’s done a full 180 from Ken worrying about paying for dinner to a character terraforming a section of the moon. There’s a lot of quite nasty death and destruction here for a code approved book but Byrne being a clever plotter does find a pretty decent way to wrap it all up, including the origin mystery by issue 19.

Overall you can see what a mess this and the New Universe ended up being, saying that though, despite the 3 awful fill-in issues between Shooter and Byrne all the individual issues are really good and full of some really good concepts not seen before. I’m glad I pieced it all together finally after over 30 years.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by garjones.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by garjones.

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Chris-S, DavidM, Todd, Dave, lorcan_nagle, Vikram

Have you followed that up with Hickman and Aaron’s take on the Star brand?

There was also Warren Ellis’ newuniversal reboot inbetween that died a death and fizzled out.

[garjones]

Rocket wrote:

Have you followed that up with Hickman and Aaron’s take on the Star brand?

I’ve seen  the Hickman one and read NewUniversal.

It’s all good but to be honest the whole approach at the time and how it morphed is more interesting to me than than the actual characters and concepts (which they’ve changed significantly anyway in the re-introductions).

The idea of a real-time realistic imprint set on something much closer to our Earth isn’t really something carried over but rather Star Brand as a Green Lantern with a tattoo instead of a ring. In truth that realistic approach Shooter envisioned only lasted about 10 months, by the middle of Byrne’s issue the President is no longer Reagan (or Bush 1) but an evil supervillain called Voigt with mind control powers.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by garjones.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by garjones.

The other interesting this with the New Universe is the books actually sold pretty well, especially Star Brand was a very profitable book until the end, even though they switched it to bi-monthly and ended it at #19. I’d always assumed they flopped but reading up on them today that wasn’t the case. Not X-Men numbers but far from cancellation ones.

Apparently it was more Shooter was the driving force behind it all and what talent they had on the books the other editors wanted when he left. Sales were going up across the line so they focused elsewhere.

 

I always assumed STRIKEFORCE: MORITURI was one of the New Universe titles, since it was published in the same time frame (1986-1989); but apparently it was a stand-alone book that had a tenuous connection to the original Marvel Universe.

I think it was meant to be entirely unconnected, they probably added one on later (as they do and did with NU during Gruenwald’s Quasar run).

I loved Morituri but it is a bit of an oddity for Marvel as a non licensed or Epic book at the time that existed in its own universe.

Yeah, some of the “connections” included one character’s child reading an X-Men comic book; another was the aliens’ collection of trophies from their victories, including Captain America’s shield.

Full disclosure: I don’t remember these things off the top of my head; I found a Wikipedia page for the series that mentions these things.

I’ve decided to start reading John Byrne’s full Fantastic 4 run on MU. Similarly to the Star Brand example I picked up and enjoyed random issues in British newsagents at the time but have never actually gone back and read most of it. A couple off issues in it’s good but rather safe but I know better is coming.

It did dawn on me last year that I was espousing on a lot of 80s runs but outside the X-Men, my first love, had never really read all of them because of rough distribution at the time and no proper trade programme until the 2000s. Miller’s Daredevil I only properly finished last year.

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Dave

I like Byrne’s FF a lot, I read it in the omnibuses when they came out. The soap-opera stuff is great, it keeps throwing out the imaginative concepts, and it moves nice and quickly.

There’s one moment in particular in that run which is an absolute killer, which I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t read it, but which made me put the book down for a few minutes as it hits so hard.

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Sean Robinson, garjones

I tend to be a rabid consumer of new material. I re-watch and re-read almost nothing. It’s why I tend not to get as worked up as many by stuff like Star Wars and superhero movies as 90% of the time I’ll only watch them once (and that one is unlikely to change).

So it only really dawned on me last year that for most of those ‘classic runs’ I’d only read a part, sometimes a very small part to be honest.  I’d only read 3 issues of Born Again. Sometimes a mix of bits and pieces by following the UK reprints and some of the original issues.

With Byrne’s FF run I got around maybe 10 issues as a kid. So I know a lot of what’s coming to a degree but that’s a very small percentage of the work.

Marvel Unlimited gives the option to read as much as I want at a small price but I have had that for something like 8 years so I can’t just say it’s down to the opportunity that gives, also not that lockdowns instigated it because I started last year.

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DavidM, Dave

Coincidentally, I’m just reading the Frank Miller Daredevil Omnibus at the moment myself. I’ve likewise read a few issues here & there, but not the whole lot. Just reaching #178. It’s cracking stuff.

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Chris-S, Dave

Miller’s DD is another one of those classic runs that really does hold up. You can see him innovating and inventing new approaches as the run goes along. It’s great.

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Chris-S

His initial Daredevil run was my next stop last year after filling the gaps in Born Again. I’d only read the start of it in The Daredevils Marvel UK reprints, which still has the greatest anthology lineup ever of that and the Moore and Davis Captain Britain strips.

 

 

 

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Dave

I’m a little too young to have read Daredevils at the time, but it did have a great lineup. And also included this cracking parody of Miller’s DD by Alan Moore:

 

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Vikram

Furlough Read #7 – Spawn #258 – #266 (with Savage Dragon #216 & 217). This was the brief Erik Larsen run on the book, shortly after Al Simmons returned to the title role.

I went into this cold. It starts very much in media res, following directly on from the events of the previous issue. A little weird, given Larsen’s heralded arrival. Not that it was too difficult to get the gist of what was happening. Al’s in hell, fighting demonic forces for the soul of his dead wife. Lots of carnage ensues.

From there, he eventually returns to NYC, with a new lease on life, and a mission to be the greatest superhero that he can.

The plot line feels very Larsen, but the writing is very McFarlane. It’s a difficult book to read, as it tries to take itself very seriously, in the same way that most angsty teenagers do, without the maturity and life experience to back that up.

But, as with the celebratory anniversary issues to come, I didn’t buy these books for the words. I’m here for the pretty pictures. And on that score, it does pretty well for itself.

I hear Todd & Erik truly collaborated on the art in this book, moving back & forth between different roles. Sometimes (most of the time to my eyes) Erik pencilled and Todd inked. Other times it was the reverse. It definitely created an interesting look to the book, with Todd’s heavier rendering giving an unusual amount of depth to Erik’s bombastic art. It’s actually quite a fun looking book.

For example (this is a double page spread from #261):

The run ends with a Savage Dragon crossover, but by this point a lot of the energy had gone out of the partnership. Resulting in a pretty lacklustre and anti-climatic finale, featuring an incredibly dull story and pretty lifeless art.

No details are provided why the run ended so abruptly, except for some pointed comments in the Savage Dragon letter column suggesting that Todd was a bit of a control freak. Which funnily enough is why the Paul Jenkins run that immediately preceded this also ended in similar fashion.

Still, it was fun whilst it lasted. I’m not a regular reader of the title, but I doubt Spawn has ever been so overtly a superhero book before or after this run.

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DavidM, njerry

Dave wrote:

I’m a little too young to have read Daredevils at the time, but it did have a great lineup

The thing that’s still missing, even from online searches I’ve done in the past, is The Daredevils had a lot of text pieces and almost all written by Moore. He did fanzine reviews, including one of the very first issues of Viz Comic before it blew up and became massive. I recall a run of articles about ‘misogyny in comics’ running over a few months.

At that point Marvel US seemed to have handed over all responsibility for the content to Bernie Jaye in the London office, a great contrast to when Marvel UK started in the early 70s and was run primarily out of the New York bullpen. Aside from the satire of Dourdevil (which is quite cutting in places but Moore was an admitted fan of Miller’s work) they could get quite critical of the parent company but I don’t think anyone there was reading.

It’s a bit hazy now and could have been somewhere else but I think he had a real go at the treatment of Kirby’s original art in there.

Yeah, I’ve always meant to try and piece together an original set at some point. And Warrior.

Now that I’ve finished picking up the Grant Morrison issues of Zoids maybe that needs to be my next ebay hunt.

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Chris-S

I came upon a website that has attempted to list all the Wildstorm books and anthology/backup stories in somewhat chronological reading order. So guess what I’m doing now.

I’ve currently finished the “pre-history” stories — mostly Team 7 stuff that focuses on the military team (including Cole Cash/Grifter, Jackson Dane, Marc Slayton/Backlash, John Lynch, and Michael Cray/Deathblow) that was purposely exposed to the “Gen Factor” that gave them special powers that they then passed on to their offspring. Now I’m moving on to the earliest-published books including the first StormWatch arc, the first WildCATs arc, and the first few issues of Deathblow.

Many of these stories were never collected in TPBs so I’m pulling the individual issues from my shortboxes. This gives me the advantage of glancing through the letters pages to find some of my published letters from those days, which is an added nostalgic kick.

This is the first time I’ve done something like this, but: I am spending more time at home during the lockdown, and; there’s not a lot of new comics coming out lately, so… I’m having a lot of fun revisiting the WS Universe during its origins, when art was the primary focus and the writing was secondary; but as I read I am reminded that Jim Lee and his team soon started hiring established writers to take on some of the books; I’ve already come across Chuck Dixon (Team 7) and Steve Gerber (WildCATs Special #1), and I know there’s still Chris Claremont, James Robinson, and Alan Moore to come — and that’s just on the first WildCATs series.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Where’s Chris Striker when you need him?

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JRCarter, Todd, njerry

I went through a lot of the Byrne FF run during lockdown (around 50 issues).

It’s interesting, there was a period years ago where it was quite trendy to say that by the end of the Claremont/Byrne run everything was down to him (I think a little like the over-reaction that Stan Lee contributed nothing to early Marvel). This doesn’t quite bear that out for as this is his next thing, and while the first group of issues are perfectly decent comics, they seem a little simplistic and lacking the depth of that work. Some character stuff is a little clumsy like Frankie Raye, who is quite a cypher as a character, deciding for no reason I could see to become Galactus’ envoy.

Previously I’d completely missed this period from Byrne, having read his X-Men run (in UK reprints) and then FF only after She-Hulk had been on board a while in US originals. I think the book is always fun but picks up at that later period around Secret Wars, it brings in the more interesting elements and soap opera that X-Men was known for. I was expecting that at the start and it wasn’t really there, it was his first major solo writing gig though which is fine. Similarly when I went back to Miller’s Daredevil run he takes more time than I expected to stand out from the previous McKenzie scripted work.

The guy was also crazily prolific around then, he was writing, penciling and inking FF, plus writing and penciling Alpha Flight, plus writing The Thing. In fact in one issue the lettering changes and no letterer is listed so I have to assume he did that too.

It’s actually not that surprising really that he declared in that court case he earned over $10 million at Marvel, he was doing 6 people’s jobs every month and the quality does not suffer, it was among the best material they were putting out.

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Will_C, Sean Robinson, njerry, DavidM, Dave

you have probably moved on since this is 10 days later, but @njerry, did you read Team 1? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_One  I always liked how Lee built up his Wildstorm universe with these “pre-history” stories.

I actually read the first issues of the Team 1: WildCATs and Team 1: StormWatch books last night, will read the concluding two issues tonight. Like you, I enjoyed the history-building that went on in the WildStorm Universe, like seeing what Henry Bendix was like before he became Weatherman One, or learning that Battalion’s father was also in a superteam before him.

As I’m re-reading the WSU books, I’m following the reading order recommended on the following site: https://weatheringwildstorm.wordpress.com/the-chonology/ It’s not purely a chronological order (if it was, the Team One books would have been placed before the initial arcs of WildCATs, StormWatch, Deathblow, Wetworks and even Team 7), but I’m enjoying this reading order anyway. It makes sense.

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Todd

[JRCarter]

Recently reopened my collection of the original Black Lightning series from 1977. Unfortunately, the series was a victim of the DC Implosion.

Any Blaxploitation influence is minimal. It’s just damn good superhero storytelling, on par with a lot of other Bronze Age superhero comics. These days, a lot of what we hear about BL (aside from his TV show) is Tony Isabella’s intense commentaries on how a character he created is treated by other creators.

The first eight issues deal with Black Lightning’s war against the organized crime syndicate the 100 and its head, the albino black Tobias Whale. The next four issues (only two of which I have) are more standalone stories.

The whole run has been collected and I definitely recommend it.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by JRCarter.

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle, Sean Robinson, Dave, garjones, Will_C, Todd

I found this very interesting. Idiot move DC…

(lots more gorgeous art in the link)

How a Legion Wedding Helped Lead to the All-New, All-Different X-Men

A Legion of Super-Heroes wedding led to Dave Cockrum quitting the Legion and creating the All-New, All-Different X-Men.

STATUS: Basically True

Dave Cockrum’s first major ongoing feature was becoming the regular artist on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Cockrum LOVED the gig. He was SO into it. He redesigned pretty much everyone’s costume on the Legion. Let me repeat, he was SO into it.

He was so into the Legion that he started inventing Legion spinoff characters…

Anyhow, for Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy’s wedding, Cockrum went ALL out. He drew SO MANY characters and he also paid for the oversized artboard for the scene out of his own pocket.

Beautiful, right? Well, Cockrum had put SO much work into the page (and, again, has gone out of pocket for the artboard. Since the page was printed in the comic book sideways on a single page, he only got paid for a single page for the double-page splash, so he might have not even technically made any money on the page!) that he told Murray Boltinoff that he wanted the original art. He knew that the policy was to not give original art back, but he wanted them to make an exception. Boltinoff ultimately said yes, but then DC top editor Carmine Infantino overruled Boltinoff, saying that he just couldn’t make any exceptions to DC’s return policy for original art.

Cockrum the quit DC as a matter of principle. He went to Marvel and, of course, he later co-created the All-New, All-Different X-Men, using some of the designs from his time with the Legion of Super-Heroes for his rejected Outsiders pitch…

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle, Todd, njerry

I finished my Byrne FF run. I had some surprise at how good my newsagent trawling was in the mid 80s as I had read all of the last 10 issues with no gaps. That was a big challenge in the UK where these things were packed as shipping ballast.

Overall it’s great superhero comics but in retrospect I’m not sure many of the ideas he came up with were that well followed up on. Maybe they could have been if he hadn’t been poached by DC for the Superman launch but on full reading She-Hulk is a very peripheral character who has very little personal development in this book. A lot of subplots, like Johnny’s various romances, Wyatt Wingfoot and Jen,  and Reed and Sue taking civilian identities in the suburbs start and don’t really go anywhere.

What I did like a lot was the nuance in the villains, especially with Galactus and Doom. The artwork also incredible for a guy doing 2 books a month, plus writing 3. The way he draws kids is really weird though and always has been.

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Chris-S, DavidM

Shifted my Byrne re-read over to Alpha Flight. Another one where I had read about a quarter of the issues in the run and never gone back and read it all.

This is a much better book than his Fantastic Four in my opinion, albeit the best parts of his FF run are towards the end which run concurrently with this. It’s really quite daring in its structure, it starts with the team being formed and then immediately defunded by Department H and split up, we then get 11 issues of effectively solo stories (with origins as backup features) until they reunite with issue 12 where he kills off the leader. In the first section of the run we get the Snowblind story with its empty panels and an issue that is mostly silent.

I also saw how blatant Northstar’s sexuality is within the confines of the Comics Code Authority at the time, people often point to the panel where a half naked guy answers the phone at his house but before that there’s a very unambiguous bit in his origin story. Hudson points to how he used his powers to cheat his way into becoming a skiing champ where he could have wealth, adulation and women ‘but you never seemed that interested in the women’.

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Chris-S, DavidM, JRCarter, Dave, Todd

Treated myself to the entire run of uncollected Daredevil issues drawn by David Mazzucchelli, many of which I haven’t read.

He’s one of the all-time great DD artists so it’s crazy that so much of his work of this era hasn’t been reprinted.

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Chris-S, DavidM

Those DD’s were written by Denny O’Neil, right? Should be a good read too.

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Dave

Yep. I’ve made a start already and it’s good solid superhero comics, elevated by the art. It’s not quite at Born Again levels yet but it’s very good.

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Vikram

Picked up this 2014 issue from Avatar, mainly for the AlanMoore story illustrated by Facundo Percio, which didn’t disappoint.

Part self-effacing autobiography, part lecture about Glycon’s history and place among the deities, and part silly comics romp, it packs a lot into its 10 pages.

For those who like it when Moore indulges his silly side, this is definitely worth picking up. It’s very funny, and there’s some substance there too to go along with the laughs.

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Chris-S, garjones

Picked this issue up to check out some early Sean Murphy work in a delightful and surprising Haden Blackman-penned story that involves Han and Chewy taking a wrong turn and ending up in the company of… Indiana Jones.

Fun, silly, high-concept and poignant like only the best comics are.

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Chris-S

That’s an old comic? Shit.

$5.99 cover price at the time seems hefty.

Not for a 64 pager it wasn’t.

Ben wrote:

That’s an old comic? Shit.

Nooooo. It’s only from a couple years ago.

For the purposes of this thread, I think ‘old comics’ is any single issue comics that don’t fall into the New Comics thread.

But yeah, this is maybe older than you’d like to think.

It isn’t maybe older than I know you like to not think. It’s a fairly new comic, Dave. FAIRLY NEW.

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DavidM, Dave

[Will_C]

I may have to break the thread with these two Grant Morrison co-written issues from 2018 (both are Dark Nights: Metal tie-ins):

Sideways Annual #1 – Although I have no interest in Sideways as a character, or in Dan DiDio’s writing, I got this because it guest-stars Morrison’s Seven Soldiers line-up and the New 52 T-shirt & jeans Superman. The plot is indecipherable. For some reason Sideways helps the Seven Soldiers (yes, they’re working together as a team) get to an alternate dimension to battle a version of Queen Gloriana of the Sheeda. Then Zatanna sends Sideways off to find New 52 Superman, who’s also in this alternate dimension for vague reasons. Together they beat up a massive robot spider army.

There are also alternate versions of Superman’s supporting cast (not the New 52 ones, these guys are from one of the “Dark Multiverse” worlds) that have been changed into hideous monsters. No idea what they’re about. Crap issue, I can’t imagine Morrison had any fun helping write this.

Dark Knights Rising: The Wild Hunt – This is another one where it felt like Morrison was brought on just to write some characters he’d written before. This time, they’re Egg-Fu’s science squad from 52, although they’re hardly in it. This one-shot has four writers (Morrison + Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, & Joshua Williamson) and three artists (Howard Porter, Doug Mahnke, & Jorge Jimenez). Predictably it’s a mess. This is my first time reading a comic with the Batman Who Laughs in it and I have to say I’m not a fan.

This book ties in heavily with Morrison’s map of the multiverse from The Multiversity but, aside from an ape version of the JLA who show up at the end, there’s little of the joy in oddball characters that book exhibited. The Multiversity, as with most of Morrison’s superhero work, is a mission statement to keep comics weird and kinky and fun. Dark Nights: Metal seems to exist mainly to introduce shitty death metal variants of DC’s superheroes. Maybe it’s better than that, I’ve only read these two tie-in issues after all, but what I’ve read doesn’t inspire much hope.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Will_C.

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Chris-S, DavidM, Dave

I agree on that Sideways annual, it was an utter mess.

I quite enjoyed that Wild Hunt issue from what I remember though. Maybe I was in a good mood at the time or something.

Either way, I do think the Metal stuff all feels like a failed attempt to do something in the Morrison event-comic mould, but only imitating the most superficial aspects of his style.

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Will_C

[Vikram]

I like the Metal books, but mostly because I really like Snyder and Capullo. I think they’re one of the greatest modern day creative teams. I think the core Metal books by the two of them are pretty good, although it definitely feels like a case of Capullo wanting to draw some cool stuff and Snyder trying to string together a story to make it happen. Aka the Jeph Loeb style of writing, as opposed to Snyder’s own.

The tie in’s are difficult though, even when Snyder’s involved. He’s a pretty generous crossover guy – he always tries to give each book something important to say or do, that will impact the main book somehow, but the creative tissue connecting them doesn’t always sync up, and you often get a weird disjointed mess. These creative jam books in particular seem to scream “rushed to plug a whole in the schedule” and/ or “blatant cash grab” to me.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Vikram. Reason: Autocorrect is just weird sometimes!

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Chris-S, Will_C, Dave

I’ve become a bit of a Doctor Strange fan of late (can you tell?) and I recently read Doctor Strange/Doctor Doom : Triumph and Torment. After a lengthy set-up that gives us a none-too-convincing reason why Strange would team up with Doom, we get into the meat of the story, Doom’s quest to release his mother’s soul from Hell. It’s a solid, if unspectacular read – like most Roger Stern tales in fact – but it’s enlivened by some early Mike Mignola art. His work is a little scrappier here than we’re used to nowadays, but it gives him a chance to draw the kind of demons and monsters he’d later become better known for.

I also read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s pre-Scott Pilgrim book “Lost At Sea.” There are brief signs of Pilgrim-style quirkiness, but it’s mostly just sort of navel-gazing and angsty without any of the humour that lifted Pilgrim out of that self-absorbed rut.

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garjones, Dave, DavidM, njerry, lorcan_nagle, Vikram

Steve Sensible wrote:

I also read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s pre-Scott Pilgrim book “Lost At Sea.” There are brief signs of Pilgrim-style quirkiness, but it’s mostly just sort of navel-gazing and angsty without any of the humour that lifted Pilgrim out of that self-absorbed rut.

I got a copy of it a couple of years ago and posted something similar on MillarWorld at the time. It definitely felt like a lot of “I must talk about my deep feelings” comics that were a big part of the 80s-early 90s indie scene.

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garjones, Dave, Steve Sensible

I have had some problems sleeping lately. No external chemicals this time, this is just one of those periods. Now, I’m not much for tossing and turning all night in frustration. If I’m not tired I might as well get some reading done. And seeing as a large collection of Ennis comics I haven’t read in a long time, or in some cases even at all, have just found its way to me I’ve dived in during the weekends nights.

It’s been interesting tracking Ennis development as a writer through them. Some of his antics I’ve not seen in a long while. Things like Detective Soapy (Welcome Back Frank) and Furys nephew Wendel (Fury MAX), and similar characters and story beats that are silly and edgy and crude to a point where they break immersion in a story that is otherwise handling quite serious themes. Preacher has a lot of that, most notably perhaps arseface, but… It doesn’t really break my immersion in the same way. It’s just as bonkers as the rest of Preacher. The Fury storys aren’t bonkers in the same way, they’re pretty straightforward with their themes of “horrors of war”, “shortcomings of politics” and “failings of corporate bureacracy” and moments of actual humanity in between. Cut to Wendel shitting himself to prolapse in a weightlifting contest and everything feels a bit off all of a sudden.

I can see this kind of edgy stuff, the stuff that feel out-of-place or off-pace for me, in the earlier issues of The Boys too. The criticisms of corporate power (and comic books) aren’t always done a service by some of the more crude bits. Ennis unhinged just doesn’t stand up to his later work, with a special mention to the current The Boys series Dear Becky, which is surprisingly restrained and mature given the nature of The Boys. (I do recommend Dear Becky, it has a real story and a welcome fleshing-out of Butcher in it!)

I’m ranting, but what I’m trying to say is: I’m real happy with how Ennis has matured as writer.

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DavidM, Will_C, Todd, garjones, Dave, lorcan_nagle

I always feel it was a bit of a phase maybe more than maturing, his early Crisis work like True Faith and Troubled Souls and then Hellblazer doesn’t really have any of the silly gross out stuff. It comes in with Preacher at a tolerable level and then escalates through his work until about halfway through The Boys he seems to drop it.

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Will_C, lorcan_nagle

This was an interesting curiosity from 1988. A flip-book collecting two stories – one by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, the other by Joyce Brabner and Tom Yeates – it explores the underside of American foreign policy from a couple of different perspectives.

The 30-page Moore/Sienkiewicz story, Shadowplay: The Secret Team, is a vivid and almost dreamlike (nightmarish?) trip through the history of some of the CIA’s darkest moments, narrated by an anthropomorphic American Eagle in a bar. It’s one of those dense-with-factual-detail stories that takes a long time to read and absorb, but which rewards you for it with shocking and disturbing pieces of swept-under-the-carpet history, brought to life with expressive art and dark wit and humour from Moore.

The second story, Flashpoint: The La Penca Bombing, is more of a docudrama revolving around a single incident in Nicaragua in 1984. It’s an interesting experiment in comics-form journalism that suffers a little from having so many different people and events to cover in its 32 pages, and ends on a somewhat inconclusive and anticlimactic note. But it’s still interesting and worthwhile stuff.

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Chris-S, DavidM, Todd, Will_C, lorcan_nagle

garjones wrote:

It comes in with Preacher at a tolerable level and then escalates through his work until about halfway through The Boys he seems to drop it.

It’s maybe time to finally finish The Boys; I grew a bit tired of it back then.

I dropped The Boys after Herogasm, I seem to think. It still haunts me that I did so just before it seems to have turned around. I should have had more faith in Ennis back then.

The entire series is up on Humble Bundle this month, btw. Now might be a good time.

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lorcan_nagle

I read the first trade of The Boys when it came out, thought it was too much gross out stuff and left it there. It was a big Comixology sale that got me to try it again, I think the lot was 80% off or something.

It’s a very big ask of any reader really when a series that long gets good about halfway through but for $15 on Humble Bundle for the lot + some other Dynamite trades, it is the ideal way to do it.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

I think it’s fairly unusual for that kind of tonal shift to happen within a series too. If you read 30 issues of something you don’t expect it to suddenly become a very different type of book after that.

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Vikram

No, it’s very strange. Thinking about it further maybe more than tone he just gets interested in the characters. Initially they are very one-dimensional, tough guys out to maim the evil superheroes. So the story is a progression of more violent incidents and perverted behaviour from the supes. When he dives into the back stories of some of them and even adds some nuance to the bad guys it gives you reason to be interested.

 

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Chris-S, Vikram, Dave, lorcan_nagle

Just finished re-reading Planet Hulk, which I haven’t done since it came out… 15 years ago?? Where does the time go…

It was.. fine. A big improvement on the doldrums where the Hulk had been resting for a while prior to this, but still not as much fun as I remember the real classic Hulk comics (i.e. the Bill Mantlo/Sal Buscema run) being. One of the biggest problems for me was Carlo Pagulayan’s art – his storytelling made it hard to follow sometimes, particularly in action scenes where I had to really scrutinise the art to work out what had just happened, and he’s not great at drawing different faces, making it hard to work out who I was looking at on occasion.

I had two even bigger problems with it though; firstly I’m not a fan of the heroes being the bad guys, by which I mean the catalyst for this event, the “Illuminati.” Early 2000’s Marvel was infested with the Bendis/Millar effect of making everyone flawed to the point of being a complete asshole, and the Illuminati shooting Hulk into space, then blowing up the planet he just saved (accidentally or otherwise) makes it hard to ever consider those people heroes.

And secondly, that whole blowing-the-planet-up-at-the-end thing kind of renders the entire storyline pointless!

I’m going to give World War Hulk a try, but I remember it being even worse than Planet Hulk, so I don’t know if I’ll bother finishing it.

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DavidM, njerry, Todd

I’ve been reading a lot of bronze-age Marvel series lately, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on some of them. First up is Nova…

I have a nostalgic attachment to Nova. The very first US Marvel comic I owned was Nova #5 – up until then, I’d only read Marvel UK reprints. Shortly after that I got hold of Daredevil #142, in which Nova also cameos, so I just assumed he was a big star in the Marvel Universe. (Turns out that Daredevil issue was written by Marv Wolfman, plugging his own creation!)

Nostalgia aside, Nova has not aged well. Marv Wolfman created Nova when he was in college, and unsurprisingly, the character got his intro into the Marvel Universe – with a top-tier art-team no less – during Marv’s very brief tenure as Editor-in-chief.

The first few issues are fun enough, with some nice art from John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, although they occasionally appear to be phoning it in – take a look at this panel for instance. What is Condor standing on exactly?? The perspective makes it look about 3 feet high, and yet the police cars are far below…

After a couple of issues, Sal Buscema takes over and is his usual reliable self. However, even in 1976, these comics must have seemed like a bit of a throwback. They lack the sophistication of a lot of other bronze-age books. At a time when Doctor Strange was encountering heroin addicts in Central Park and Steve Gerber was satirising politics and culture with a cartoon duck, Nova seems a little regressive.

Sadly, then things get a whole lot worse – Carmine Infantino takes over on art-chores. I loved Infantino’s silver age work on the Flash etc., but that indistinct, sketchy style doesn’t always translate well to other characters, and at this point in his career, having fallen from the heady heights of Publisher at DC Comics back to freelance artist, he wasn’t exactly producing his best work any more.

Marv Wolfman’s writing style is such that it requires a strong visual storyteller, and 50-something Carmine Infantino was not that. There’s maybe the germ of a good ongoing story in those later issues of Nova, but it’s lost under a sea of unimaginative designs and murky speedlines trying to cover the lack of any detail in the art.

Unsurprisingly, the book was cancelled with #25. A few dangling plotlines are later tied up in ROM and the Fantastic Four, but otherwise, Nova pretty much disappeared for nearly a decade after that. Wolfman subsequently left Marvel for DC, and nobody made use of his character again until the New Warriors appeared in 1990.

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DavidM, Todd, Dave

Steve Sensible wrote:

take a look at this panel for instance. What is Condor standing on exactly?? The perspective makes it look about 3 feet high, and yet the police cars are far below…

Or they’re tiny toy police cars!

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DavidM, Steve Sensible

Time to delve into another bronze age classic…

I was hoping Ms. Marvel might fare a bit better than Nova, what with Chris Claremont’s involvement, but sadly this run wasn’t up to much either.

Ms. Marvel started as just a name – an idea to try and attract a female audience at a time when Women’s Lib was taking hold. Apparently Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes pitched an idea about a waif-like waitress who grew strong in moments of crisis, but Stan Lee didn’t care for the idea, wanting instead a more statuesque heroine. Then it was given to Gerry Conway, who along with his wife Carla, came up with what we eventually got.

Conway writes the first two issues, and whilst they’re entertaining enough, I’d forgotten what a confusing mess Ms. Marvel’s origin was…

Carol Danvers had been caught in the radiation from an exploding Kree gadget back in Captain Marvel #18 in 1969, and then the character disappeared for the next 7 years. When she reappears in Ms. Marvel #1 she’s no longer NASA security chief but has become an editor for J Jonah Jameson.

Except she keeps having blackouts and unbeknownst to Carol, she changes into Ms. Marvel. Presumably the body-swap angle is a nod to Captain Marvel’s similar gimmick with Rick Jones, but here there’s no logic to it, nor any explanation for it.

What’s more, Ms. Marvel has memories that aren’t hers, but Mar-Vell’s. So, she’s part Mar-Vell and part Carol Danvers… and she wears a suit laced with Kree technology that allows her to fly. Where did that come from?? Again, none of this is explained until much later, when Chris Claremont tries to make sense of it all, but his explanation doesn’t really convince. In fact he leans very heavily on yet another oddity – Ms. Marvel’s “seventh sense” (presumably it’s one better than a sixth sense) to kick-start way too many stories.

Claremont’s run is pretty forgettable, apart from a memorably creepy moment where she’s brainwashed by MODOK.

The art starts off well enough, with once again, the high-profile team of John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, this time producing some stellar work – Buscema’s Ms. Marvel is every bit the powerful heroine that Stan Lee was after.

Buscema sticks around for a few issues, but is then replaced by Jim Mooney, with Sinnott remaining to carry on the slick look of the book. But then, you begin to sense the book isn’t selling. Between #9 & 19, there aren’t two consecutive issues with the same art-team. Clearly it was something of a hot potato, and by the time Dave Cockrum shows up with a new look for the character, it’s too late and the book is cancelled with #23, by which time Mike Vosburg has become the regular artist, which is clearly something of a downgrade from when the book began.

As to whether Ms. Marvel succeeds at being a feminist icon, ummmm…  nope! There are nods to progressiveness, with Carol standing up to J Jonah Jameson and demanding equal pay, but at the same time, it’s feminism through the filter of an all-male creative team. She’s running around in a swimming costume to begin with, which is later made marginally more modest when they do away with the exposed midriff of the original costume, but then when she gets a new look, it’s somehow even more sexualised than the old costume. Apparently Dave Cockrum presented Stan Lee with several options, and Stan went for the black costume, stating, “this is what I’m after – tits and ass!”

Claremont’s writing fares no better, with Carol dating the psychiatrist who’s treating her for her blackouts, which seems more than a little unethical. Thankfully, it’s a relationship which is later forgotten.

It’s no surprise that so many writers have failed to get a handle on Carol over the years when there wasn’t much of a character there to begin with.

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Between #9 & 19, there aren’t two consecutive issues with the same art-team. Clearly it was something of a hot potato

It’s funny really. There’s a feeling among many fans that creative teams were much more long running in the past but I remember I had a Peter Parker essential from the same era and it’s a complete revolving door. There were a dozen writers and nearly twice as many artists over 30 issues or so.

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garjones wrote:

I had a Peter Parker essential from the same era and it’s a complete revolving door

It’s rarely a good sign though. Peter Parker was very much the secondary Spider-Man book so I doubt anyone was desperate to get on it. Same with Ms. Marvel – I’m sure Dave Cockrum only did it as a favour to Claremont, and even he only stuck around for 2 issues.

Agreed it’s not conducive to good storytelling.

I’d be interested in an overview of that 70s period though. I’m not sure outside a few famous ones that settled creative teams were that normal. I could be wrong as I’m looking at random samples but there seems a fair bit of jumping around.

Off the top of my head, Gene Colan drew Daredevil for several years (as well as, I believe, all 70 issues of Tomb of Dracula), George Tuska drew Iron Man for years too, same with Herb Trimpe on Hulk, and Ross Andru on Amazing Spider-man.

All of those books had a few writers, although Gerry Conway had extensive runs on DD and ASM, and Steve Englehart had quite a long run on Avengers, IIRC.

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Todd

Doug Moench wrote Master of Kung Fu for something like 100 issues, as well.

Thanks for the Ms. Marvel review, Steve. I was considering trying it out after I did a massive Claremont X-Men reread last year and she was always popping up, but it sounds like that run isn’t worth the effort.

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Will_C wrote:

Thanks for the Ms. Marvel review, Steve. I was considering trying it out after I did a massive Claremont X-Men reread last year and she was always popping up, but it sounds like that run isn’t worth the effort.

They’re an interesting curio, but sadly not much more than that. Curiously, even though the book was cancelled with #23, Claremont and Mike Vosburg completed two more issues, which didn’t see print until much later, in Marvel Superheroes #10 & 11. They would have introduced Rogue, and set her up as Ms. Marvel’s arch enemy – something that ended up being reworked for Avengers Annual #10 instead.

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Will_C wrote:

Doug Moench wrote Master of Kung Fu for something like 100 issues, as well.

I know but that and some of Steve’s examples like Trimpe on Hulk were the ‘famous’ ones I was thinking about.

Long runs for artists now are pretty much screwed by things like double shipping but outside the big titles stuff seemed pretty choppy in a lot of 70s books, and they drifted back and forth from DC and Marvel a fair bit more.

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Will_C

Watching The Boys and seeing Homelander’s son growing up in a controlled environment reminded me of J M Straczynski’s Supreme Power series from the early noughties, so I thought I’d give it a re-read.

For those who don’t know, it was a reimagining of the Squadron Supreme, a group of superheroes who were originally created as analogues of the Justice League to fight the Avengers, during Roy Thomas’ run on that book in the late 60’s. In the 80’s, Mark Gruenwald wrote a mini-series about an alternate world where those characters are forced to take over their earth in order to save it.

And Straczynski’s is kind of an “Ultimate” version of those characters, although they weren’t part of the Ultimate continuity or indeed the regular Marvel-verse.

The series starts off well enough, with a kind of “What if… Superman happened in the real world?” approach. Answer – he’s immediately taken away from the couple who find his crashed spaceship by government goons, who were also tracking his ship. Then he’s raised by government operatives who play the part of his parents, whilst he’s indoctrinated with good old-fashioned American values, so he can become their secret weapon, sorting out “difficult” political situations around the globe.

He doesn’t stay secret for long though, and it’s after he becomes a public figure that the series starts to lose its way. Straczynski starts to introduce more of the Squadron Supreme characters, but none of them get the same attention to detail that Hyperion did, so it’s harder to care about them. They also suffer from that very noughties trope of being almost completely unlikable. Also, the continuing shift in the balance of power between the Squadron and the government is never satisfactorily resolved.

The first 18 issues were released under the Marvel Max imprint, which was supposed to allow more “adult” material, but then it continued as “Squadron Supreme” without the Max banner – i.e. as just a regular Marvel book – and yet it still got away with some pretty explicit violence, such as people being boiled alive in a swimming pool super-heated by a bad-guy’s heat-vision. So apparently the only difference between Marvel and Marvel Max was the occasional use of the word “fuck” and some nudity. But only female nudity – heaven forbid you should see any male genitalia!

And the violence quickly got tedious – from the aforementioned swimming pool incident, to Nighthawk going full Rorschach, leaving a man he’d crippled to die in a burning building, pretty much everyone in Squadron Supreme was murdering people left, right and centre. JMS seemed to be in a very dark place at that time…

And then, suddenly, it was all over. Issue #7 of Squadron Supreme ended with a cliffhanger, the Squadron facing off against a super-powered psycho, but it was never resolved. JMS left for pastures new, Bendis co-opted the characters for a terrible mini-series that crossed over with the Ultimate universe, and apparently Howard Chaykin used the characters in another series that also failed to conclude what JMS had set up. Then finally, the Supreme-verse was glimpsed being destroyed during Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars, and that was that.

Overall, I can’t help thinking it should have been solicited as a mini-series. It might have made JMS focus on where he wanted the story to go, and figured out a way to get there quicker, rather than the more rambling, self-indulgent approach that the series took. There was a lot of promise there, but sadly most of it was never fulfilled.

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JMS walking off Squadron Supreme like that really annoyed me at the time, and didn’t do his reputation any good at all.

I do think the transition from Supreme Power took away some of the series’ bite, but it could have recovered in time.

Abandoning the series on a cliffhanger and making no attempt to even resolve that, or address it elsewhere once JMS walked away, basically screwed things up so much that destroying them in the Secret Wars was a bit of a mercy killing.

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Steve Sensible wrote:

Bendis co-opted the characters for a terrible mini-series that crossed over with the Ultimate universe

I’m sure JMS wrote three issues of Ultimate Power’s nine, and Jeph Loeb another three.

I remember liking Supreme Power anyway, and recently bought the trades to reread after the similarly-themed JMS book The Resistance reminded me of it. I should bump it up my stack to see if my take matches up with Steve’s.

There were also a couple of solo minis between Supreme Power and Squadron Supreme, I think – didn’t JMS write the Hyperion one?

Dave wrote:

There were also a couple of solo minis between Supreme Power and Squadron Supreme, I think – didn’t JMS write the Hyperion one?

Yep, the Hyperion one featured yet another alternate reality version of the Squadron, with a twist in the tale (with awful art by Dan Jurgens and Klaus Janson), and the Nighthawk one was by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon, and featured a Joker analogue. The former introduced another truckload of new characters who then appeared in Squadron Supreme. Aside from that, they’re entirely missable.

Vikram wrote:

Abandoning the series on a cliffhanger and making no attempt to even resolve that, or address it elsewhere

This is not my beautiful Twin Peaks thread. How did I get here?

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Anonymous wrote:

This is not my beautiful Twin Peaks thread. How did I get here?

Do you remember driving 5 miles south of the Canadian border, 12 miles west of the state line?

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Todd

DavidM wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is not my beautiful Twin Peaks thread. How did I get here?

Do you remember driving 5 miles south of the Canadian border, 12 miles west of the state line?

I’ll have to ask Diane.

Anonymous wrote:

DavidM wrote:

Anders wrote:

This is not my beautiful Twin Peaks thread. How did I get here?

Do you remember driving 5 miles south of the Canadian border, 12 miles west of the state line?

I’ll have to ask Diane.

Or the Log Lady…

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Todd

njerry wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

DavidM wrote:

Anders wrote:

This is not my beautiful Twin Peaks thread. How did I get here?

Do you remember driving 5 miles south of the Canadian border, 12 miles west of the state line?

I’ll have to ask Diane.

Or the Log Lady…

The current Squadron Supreme exists in Washington DC as puppets of a Mephisto controlled Coulson. They are very nationalistic and in one battle rather than defeating their opponents, they just push the bad guys over the border into Canada.

I really enjoyed these early Iron Fist stories.

I first read them when I was young in Marvel UK mag, Blockbuster, and didn’t care for them at the time because my tastes as a kid tended towards the more vanilla, superhero stuff. But reading them now, they’re a lot of fun. Which is surprising considering that Iron Fist is another book that appeared to have a revolving door on the editorial office.

Iron Fist was created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, but apparently it wasn’t exactly a labour of love because they left after a single issue, to be replaced by Len Wein and Larry Hama. Hama sticks around for a few issues, but Len Wein is immediately replaced by Doug Moench, who seemingly must have had about 5 minutes to turn in the plot for his first issue because it’s TERRIBLE…

It basically involves Iron Fist working his way up to the top floor of the Meachum offices – Harold Meachum being the man responsible for his father’s death – negotiating various traps that lay in wait for him. These involve spikes that pop out of the walls, machine-guns that spring out of the floors, a door that opens out 8 floors above street-level, and um…  a wolf in a cupboard! In an OFFICE BUILDING! Somehow, I don’t think the Meachum HQ is up to code…

Anyway, that issue aside, things then return to the usual entertaining mix of flashbacks about Danny’s time in K’un-Lun, and his quest for vengeance – which in fact is resolved the very next issue. 

And after that, it’s up to first Tony Isabella and then finally Chris Claremont to chart Danny’s course as he looks for a new purpose in life. The art gets progressively worse throughout this short run… until John Byrne turns up.

And his art really is a revelation. After the rougher, sketchier tones of a lot of the early Iron Fist stories, Byrne’s smooth, flowing lines and dramatic angles are a feast for the eyes. Also, he finally figures out a way to showcase the fighting, something which previous artists had struggled with, and something that’s obviously pretty important to a martial arts hero.

After the transition to his own title, Iron Fist’s stories start to lean more towards the superheroic, rather than just the martial arts world the book had previously inhabited. Iron Fist regularly interacts with the rest of the Marvel Universe – Iron Man, Captain America, and finally the X-Men all turn up and have the obligatory misunderstanding which causes them to fight with Iron Fist, then team up with him. Claremont also takes the time to flesh out Danny Rand’s supporting cast, in particular Misty Knight and Colleen Wing. Of course, this being Claremont, there are way too many words, particularly in the thought bubbles in the middle of fights, but for the most part, these books serve as a worthy debut of the creative team that would soon take the world by storm with the X-Men.

One of the things I loved about this series is how well it uses recognisable locations in New York. From specific streets in Chinatown, to the office of Nightwing Restorations in the Ansonia Hotel on Broadway. They even refer to a specific restaurant called Sandolino’s which was in Greenwich Village in the 70’s, and was presumably a favourite of various Marvel staffers. A number of whom turn up in the stories, in fact – both Byrne and Claremont make appearances (that’s Byrne in the image above on the subway platform) as well as the Marvel Bullpen playing softball in Central Park. It’s little details like this that help ground the superheroics in an authentic place and time. 

After 15 issues, Iron Fist was cancelled. Marvel was in turmoil at the time, with Len Wein taking over from Roy Thomas as EiC, whilst Stan Lee and new Marvel CEO Al Landau demanded that new books be launched or cancelled on a whim. Claremont & Byrne got the chance to tie up some loose ends in Marvel Team-up #63 & 64, then they jumped across to Luke Cage, Power Man #48, which pitted Cage against Iron Fist. A couple of issues later, with the kindling of a beautiful bromance, that book was relaunched as Power Man and Iron Fist. And the rest is history…

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I loved looking those covers. There was so much energy and dynamism to them. A lot of contemporary covers lack that energy. They seem more like portraits than as a way to give a taste of the excitement inside.

Steve Sensible wrote:

One of the things I loved about this series is how well it uses recognisable locations in New York.

This is a big Claremont thing. You’ll find most comics exist in fairly generic locations but he likes to be very specific.

I’ve mentioned it before but I met him once when he was doing a signing in Forbidden Planet in Cardiff, which directly faces the castle. He paused from signing while we were queuing and was videoing with a big fat 80s camcorder out the window. We didn’t mind as he explained to us his process saying he did that everywhere he went and passed it on to artists as reference.

He’s probably not unique in that but it’s notable in his X-Men that a lot more attention than usual is placed on establishing the location of events. You remember certain stories happened in Dallas or San Francisco or Paris or Edinburgh. The usual New York setting is actual streets and shops rather than a generic place with tall buildings and water coolers. Like that Scene I shared the other day in the New Mutants annual in Denmark Street, which would have had a fair chunk of Alan Davis in there but he’d been there himself when signing in London.

For Uncany X-Men #200 they actually coincided a publicity tour of Europe with allowing John Romita Jr to get the reference of things like a fight at Notre Dame.

To be fair I’ve been re-reading a lot of 80s Byrne recently, his FF and Alpha Flight and he does it to an extent too, in the fight with Gamma Flight he gives an overhead shot of the largest mall in Canada, which maybe he learnt from Claremont or they just had like minds.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

To be fair I’ve been re-reading a lot of 80s Byrne recently, his FF and Alpha Flight and he does it to an extent too, in the fight with Gamma Flight he gives an overhead shot of the largest mall in Canada, which maybe he learnt from Claremont or they just had like minds.

Yeah, I think Byrne had lived in Edmonton where that mall is, then moved to Connecticut when he had Reed and Sue move there briefly in Fantastic Four.

I read Walt Simonson’s Thor run a while ago, and he does it as well. Referencing a particular subway station or building is such a small thing but it makes all the difference.

Todd wrote:

I loved looking those covers. There was so much energy and dynamism to them. A lot of contemporary covers lack that energy.

A lot of the earlier ones are by Gil Kane, who was physically incapable of drawing anything less than dynamic.

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[Steve Sensible]

Incidentally, my love of Marvel led me to do a bit of a nerdy tour when I visited New York in 2017…

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Steve Sensible.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Steve Sensible.

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Steve Sensible wrote:

Referencing a particular subway station or building is such a small thing but it makes all the difference.

It really does.

There are a lot of modern comics I like a lot but since the Quesada/Jemas era I find they are very plot driven. Character (which includes the character of location) has really taken a back seat.

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Steve Sensible

One last thing about Iron Fist; his origin was heavily inspired by the origin of Bill Everett’s Amazing Man, a page of which is below. When it came to testing the hero’s abilities, they didn’t f*** about in those days..!

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garjones wrote:

There are a lot of modern comics I like a lot but since the Quesada/Jemas era I find they are very plot driven. Character (which includes the character of location) has really taken a back seat.

Which is really a shame. The internet makes it very easy for a writer or artist to place their story in a specific location with decent photo-reference and a decent understanding of space. Spotting an obvious error (like an elevated train in Midtown Manhattan) jars me out of the story. Do the research, man!

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njerry wrote:

The internet makes it very easy for a writer or artist to place their story in a specific location with decent photo-reference and a decent understanding of space.

It is ironic really. Claremont now wouldn’t have to video or photograph anything. His artist could go onto Google Streetview and see the exact view from a few angles.

It just seems a change in emphasis, and it isn’t ignoring the advances in other areas with more realistic dialogue and the like but in that X-Men era characters had a religious stance, they had favourite TV shows and musicians. They had family members. It’s something that even in the best of the 21st century stuff is very rare.

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njerry wrote:

Do the research, man!

Most modern artists can’t even pencil a book on a monthly schedule. Now you expect them to fit in research too? Do you want to wait three months between issues???

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Todd

DavidM wrote:

Most modern artists can’t even pencil a book on a monthly schedule

Most silver age ones, outside of Kirby, couldn’t either. The 1970s are a land of fill in issues and sh0rt runs.

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